Resurrecting Neanderthal Antibiotic Molecules With Machine Learning
Machine learning meets molecular de-extinction to find antimicrobial molecules in ancient human genomes
Web of humanity
One species of human on earth is the exception rather than the rule. For big chunks of our (pre)history, multiple species of humans shared the planet.
Until roughly 40,000 years ago (although that’s up for debate), Neanderthals inhabited parts of Europe and Southwest Asia. The reason for their extinction was probably a combination of factors: changing climate, disease, competition with their sister species (us)…
Meanwhile, in East Asia, another species of human held sway. The Denisovans are more mysterious; all we have is very fragmentary material (finger bones and teeth/bits of jaw mostly). They are estimated to have been around until possibly around 50,000 years ago.
But even with limited fossil materials, the Nobel-winning advance in paleogenetics allows us to take a peek at pieces of genetic material from both Neanderthals and Denisovans.
In fact, we’ve been trying to rebuild tiny Neanderthal brains in a dish, and we know that differences in gene regulation might set Neanderthals apart from us…
